There is every reason to suppose that this increase of women will continue. Already girls form 56.5 per cent of the pupils in all secondary schools and 13 per cent of the girls enrolled and only 10 per cent of the boys enrolled graduate from the public high schools. It is sometimes said that men students, as a rule, dislike the presence of women, and in especial that they are unwilling to compete for prizes against women for the very reason that the average standing of women is higher than their own. If there is any force in this statement, however, it would seem that men should increase less rapidly in coeducational colleges than in separate colleges for men. The reverse, however, is the case. During the eight years from 1890 to 1898 men have increased in coeducational colleges 70.0 per cent, but in separate colleges for men only 34.7 per cent.[16] This is all the more remarkable, because in the separate colleges for men are included the large undergraduate departments of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. It is women who have shown a preference for separate education; women have increased more rapidly in separate colleges for women than in coeducational colleges. It will be observed, however, that the separate colleges for women, like the separate colleges for men included in my list of fifty-eight, are in the east; it is in the east only that any preference for separate education is shown by either sex.[17] Independent colleges for women—Since independent colleges for women of the same grade as those for men are peculiar to the United States, I shall treat them somewhat more fully.[18] The independent colleges here taken into account are the eleven colleges included in division A[19] of the U. S. education reports.[20] The independent colleges for women fall readily into three groups: I. The so-called “four great colleges for women,” Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr. It will be seen by referring to the classification on page 12 that these four colleges are included among the fifty-eight leading colleges of the United States; they are all included in the twenty-two colleges admitted to the Association of collegiate alumnæ; two of them, Bryn Mawr and Wellesley, are included in the twenty-three colleges belonging to the Federation of graduate clubs; they are all included in the list of fifty-two leading colleges of the United States given in the handbook of Minerva; they are all, except Bryn Mawr, included in the list given by the U. S. education report for 1897–98[21] of forty-six colleges in the United States having three hundred students and upward; three of them, Bryn Mawr, Smith and Vassar, are included among the fifty-two colleges of the United States possessing invested funds of $500,000 and upward, and two of them, Vassar and Bryn Mawr, are included among the twenty-nine colleges of the United States possessing funds of $1,000,000 and upward; three of them,